Mike writes:
I’m applying for an administrative-assistant position with the state. They are asking for a salary request. What am I to do? They already have the salary range listed on their website. Should I just copy that verbatim?
The Career Doctor responds:
There seems to be a rush in employers asking for salary requirements because I have received about five similar emails in the past month — from job-seekers applying to both government and private-sector jobs.
There are any number of reasons why hiring organizations ask for your salary requirement, most often to see if your request fits into the salary range for the position.
Your strategy as the job-seeker is to not get pinned down with a specific number. In fact, unless you know the range, you should be fairly vague. In your case, I would simply list the range from their site — or just the higher end of the range (if that’s where you belong).
Remember that you want to delay salary discussion for as long as possible — until you are the last, or one of the last, job-seekers left. You’ll have more power to negotiate when the employer decides you are the perfect candidate for the job.
However, employers can get the upper hand in the process by asking for your salary requirements, often eliminating those folks who ask for too little or too much. So, if the salary range is not listed, your goal should be to see if you have a networking contact within the company who can supply that information, or use a service such as salary.com to get a ballpark of the salary range. If you do not have any firm information on the salary range, you should try and be as vague as possible, such as “a salary in the mid $30’s.”
Read much more about salary requests in my article, Responding to Requests for Salary Requirements or Salary Histories: Strategies and Suggestions, published on Quintessential Careers.
